“No! I don’t like cleaning up my toys! I don’t want to earn tokens!” But he wants to watch a movie which costs 10 tokens. I caught him just going to get the tokens from the token bin to “pay” for his movie.

“No! I don’t want to eat breakfast! I just want my vitamin. And some cookies. Ummm, and crackers. “

“No! I don’t want to do Joy School!....Can we read that story from it? Can we listen to that song?”

“No! I don’t want to play with my friend.” I am guessing later he will beg to play with that kid.

Today must be Contrary Day for preschoolers. At least he is cute. And nice most of the time. And at least he is so dang hilarious that we can’t help but love having him in our family.

Here are a few funny stories about Reece from this last week:

He actually chased down Santa as he was leaving from the church Christmas party and asked him point blank in an in-your-business type of way “Santa! What is your vehicle?” Santa looked at him a bit confused (what 4 year old says vehicle?) and said “Um, a Car?” Reece answered back by yelling “What?!” at which point someone said Santa’s sleigh must be in the shop. Reece was ok with that cover-up answer.

Due to sleep deprivation, we decided to take the runny nosed kids to the doctor this week and found out that both Reece and Davis have ear infections. Fun stuff. Well, that is not the funny part as you can tell. The fun was when the doctor comes in and Reece nonchalantly says “Hey! your the doctor. What do you do?” Dr. Erickson, the doctor, responds with “Yes, I am the doctor. I guess I help fix people. Who are you?” This is Reece’s response: “I’m Diego.” “ What do you do?” said Dr. Erickson. “Rescue animals” answered Reece. “ My neighbor Dora (AKA Tabby) helps me. We rescue baby Jaguar all the time.” Oh yes, he has taken his imagination to new heights. Did I mention that I barely call him Reece anymore because he wants me to only call him Diego?

We have been listening to Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events series that chronicles the sad tale of the Baudelaire children while the kids try to escape Count Olaf as we drive around in the van. These books use some big vocabulary and explain what the big words mean and they really are quite fun to listen to on CD. Now I keep finding big words in my own 4 year old’s vocabulary. He uses “otherwise,” “Deus ex machina,” and other big 4 syllable words. I will not be surprised when he starts using the phrase “bolt from the blue” next. He seriously is a sponge and soaks up all these incredible words that are a crack-up to hear coming out of such a little guy!